


testament

by thewugtest



Series: Atticus Verse [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Atticus Verse, F/M, Gen, Original Character(s), Welcome to Hell! Welcome to Hell! Welcome t
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 20:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11814015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewugtest/pseuds/thewugtest
Summary: This is, somehow, how it all begins: alone and cold with the fractals of guilt drowning her consciousness. The end of the world came fast and it came hard, and she somehow wasn't there to see it. Whatever regret remains is about that. Whatever regret remains is about everything that comes next.





	testament

Paradoxically, the first thing that Anya registered was the numbness. There was a dull, static-like lack of feeling in her fingers, her hands. It crept up her arms. Like cobwebs, it lingered in her veins and bones, a disorganised chain of forgetful nerves.

The rest of her was cold.

She fell forward out of the decontamination pod as the door hissed open, shivering violently and hitting the floor hard enough to promise future bruises. Breathing was difficult, like her lungs were refusing air; each gasp came in a coughing, forceful wheeze. The floor was dusty, marred with a thin scattering of sand across the polished metal.

Above her, bloodied and empty-eyed behind the glass pane, Nate was there. She could somehow barely stomach the sight of him, even blurred by the exhausted distance of her body. He looked wrong. The lifeless shell of him, partially consumed by time-etched frost, could not have been asleep, could not have been merely dreaming. She'd always thought death would look like sleep.

Her voice didn't come to her, even when her head screamed for her to beg him back to life. Her Nathan. Beautiful and dark-eyed and funny and loving and—gone, even as she forced herself to her knees and clawed for the release on the chamber, as the thing came stutteringly alive. The metallic buzz of the recorded warning about cryogenic failure had become a mantra of terror.

"Nate," she finally said as she threw herself at him, burying her face in her dead husband's shoulder. Grasping for his unmoving hand. Then again, and more times: "Nate—Nate, Nate, Nathan. . ." It was some kind of prayer. Some kind of empty prayer.

The crying lasted a while, that way. She didn't bother measuring the time. It lasted long enough for the system to tire itself out and the alarm to flicker out, long enough for Anya to sift through her memories and find the source of her anguish. Some vague recollection had remained of what had happened, an image of the strangers who had stolen her son, but there was nothing concrete. There was simply the terror of loss and then the terror of loss.

Anya numbly slid the ring off of Nate's finger. She wanted, irrationally, to bond it to her. To sew it into her heart. To put it in her mouth. To do anything that would bring her somehow closer. It fit comfortably nowhere except for her thumb. She put it on, peeled herself from her husband's corpse after kissing his forehead, and forced herself to walk away.

Whatever she felt, God help her, it was not fear. It was barely anger. The first thing Anya could register was the numbness.

**Author's Note:**

> first in-canon-era thing related to the atticus verse, in which nick valentine, hancock, the sole survivor, and a drug addict with a bad attitude are all tragically linked through the death of the commonwealth's near-mythical hero. more to be seen soon i guess.


End file.
